Google brings Motion Stills to Android, where it’s all motion and no stills

A full year after launching on iOS, Google’s Motion Stills app has arrived on Android — but in pretty much a completely different form.

Motion Stills on iOS is meant to be a really easy way to turn the iPhone’s Live Photos into shareable GIFs — and it’s pretty great at that. But Android doesn’t have Live Photos, so the new Motion Stills is basically just a camera app that exports GIFs.

The app can take two different types of shots. The first, which Google calls a “motion still,” is just a three second video loop. It’s kind of puzzling, because it seems like this is meant to be an alternative to Live Photos — it even records the same length of footage. But there’s not actually a photo involved. Which is weird, because the feature is called “motion still,” but there is only motion, and no still.

The second type of shot is called a “fast forward,” and this one is a little more interesting. It’s basically a Google-made alternative to Instagram’s Hyperlapse app, which has never been brought to Android. Like Hyperlapse, Google’s fast forward mode lets you record a video, then automatically stabilizes that video and can speed it up from twice to eight times the original speed. In a nice touch, you can keep changing the fast forward speed even after the video is shot and saved, whereas Instagram’s app only gives you one chance to choose a video’s speed.

This is far from the only option for taking hyperlapse-style shots on Android. Microsoft even released an app called Microsoft Hyperlapse Mobile. Google’s option seems to work well enough, though it took a minute for the app to process a video I took that was only about 25 seconds long. Its stabilization doesn’t look great at lower speeds, either — though faster motion seems to hide the jumpiness.